


Live Fast, Die Young, Leave a Good Looking Corpse

by Supertights



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, Drinking & Talking, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, Mild Language, Survivor Guilt, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-01 12:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2773733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supertights/pseuds/Supertights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter Quills nurses a drink and an epic case of survivor's guilt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Live Fast, Die Young, Leave a Good Looking Corpse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magicasen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicasen/gifts).



> Thanks to my amazing beta Moriann.

Peter hummed along as the Starlin's resident band murdered a Terran song, or maybe it wasn't the particular song he was thinking of but its cosmic evil twin. Whichever it was, he got caught up in a burst of nostalgia and began to sing softly out of key.

"What's that? Sounds familiar," asked Rich, as he sat down with a combined oomph and sigh of relief. He looked remarkably good for a man who'd just returned from the dead, missing a limb.

"No idea," replied Peter, signalling the waitress to bring more drinks. He was already going to be crawling home but what the hell, he could always slither. "How's the arm?"

Rich flexed his new prosthetic arm, wiggling his fingers. Covered in synthetic skin, it was hard to tell it from the original. With a grunt, he replied, "Rocket tells me it'll handle everything I used to do with it and more. It'll absorb and fire Nova force like it was born to it." Rich looked pensive in the low light of the bar. "He says it's better than a flesh one. I’m reserving judgment."

Peter grunted. "Rocket could sell an iceberg to a polar bear. It'd still be an iceberg but it'd be the best damn iceberg that polar bear ever saw. The arm looks very nice though." He allowed himself a moment or two to wallow in guilt, the events of the Cancerverse still too fresh to ignore.

"Ri-i-ight. Icebergs, polar bears -- are you usually this lucid when you're drinking?" said Rich with a grin.

"Usually less, sometimes more," Peter shrugged and wiped his face. He felt tired.

The waitress returned with their drinks, placing a bottle on Peter's side of the table, and left them alone again. Rich picked up a glass with his new hand and studied it intently, lost in sensations for a few minutes. "I took it for granted, that feeling you get from holding or touching different things. My brain is overloading from glass right now, what the hell is it going to do to me when it's more complex textures like skin? I need to get Rocket to adjust the settings."

The words washed over Peter as he felt a dawning awareness of the two of them, sitting in Starlin’s, like they had once before, a long time ago, when they'd been younger and fired up from the defeat of Annihilus and the Annihilation Wave. "I-I thought you were dead, you were supposed to be dead," Peter said suddenly, then drank and refilled his glass in fast succession. He looked accusingly as Rich. "I didn't much like you being dead so don't get dead again on my watch."

"I didn't care for the experience either, you know," replied Rich wryly, emptying his own glass. "As I said, coming back wasn't the plan. I was dying, I gave you an out of that equally dying universe with my last breath, and then I think I was actually dead.” He paused and fixed Peter with a unamused look. “Now I'm alive and sitting in a dive bar on Knowhere, missing my own party, a party that you organised for me."

Refilling Rich's glass, Peter put the bottle down harder than he intended, and they both jumped a little. "Sorry," said Peter. "Sorry, sorry, sorry." He swallowed and added, "For getting you dead, I mean."

"Pete, what're you doing in here on your own, drowning yourself in liquor, feeling guilty that I died when everyone else I know is celebrating me being alive?" Rich tilted his head a little, confused but kind, he drank slowly. "Gamora is in a rare good mood, dancing on a table, some kind of sword and dagger and veils thing. Technically it might not be dancing but overly friendly stabbing and strangling and, to be honest, I'm a little too intimidated to find out. Angela has asked her to marry her at least three times in the last few hours. Groot asked once. I might've asked as well." He tapped the glass when it was empty again and Peter automatically refilled it. "We should take a few bottles of this back with us, it's good stuff."

"Liar. It's shit but it works fast and the hangover is appalling," said Peter, grinning lopsidedly into his glass. "What'd Gamora say?"

"No, no, no--lots of no." Rich stared into his glass, turning it this way and that, studying the verdant liquid with feigned interest. "Guess she's not as in love with me as I thought I was in love with her."

"Thought?" Peter held his breath with an over dramatic gasp, then coughed when he swallowed air down wrong.

Rich waited until the coughing fit was over, patting him on the back a few times to help things along. "I was caught up in a moment - twice actually. When I believed I was going to die and when I realised I was going to live. Very confusing, I almost professed my undying love to you too. Like I said, confusing." He blushed and dipped his head in embarrassment.

"Oh." Peter fell silent and Rich held the moment for a while, not replying or encouraging further discussion, just letting Peter digest things mentally. "So-- what're you going to do now? You're not leaving, are you?"

"Thought I might hang with the Guardians for a while, until I figure out what to do next, if that's okay with you. I have to rebuild the Nova corps for the second time, that's still a goal." Rich turned his glass over. "But if you mean right now, Pete, well, right now, I’m taking you back to the ship so you can forget about this epic survivor's guilt complex you've got going on. Let’s rejoin the party and live it up a little."

"Okay. Didn't I tell you I was a total emotional mess? I have daddy issues as well. I flirt with everything that looks at me and half of what doesn't. I try to get killed, on average, once a week," grumbled Peter as Rich capped the bottle and lifted him from his seat with one hand under his armpit. "And I fell in love with someone I shouldn't have?"

"Oh yeah? Who was that then?" Rich's arm snaked around his waist, pulling an arm over his shoulder, supporting him out of the bar.

Peter leaned into him, relaxing into the ambient warmth that Novas gave off. "Guess--"

**Author's Note:**

> What the heck is this ship called? QuillRider? NovaQuill? Whatever it's called, it's adorable and I couldn't resist.
> 
> Could easily be read with the last Nova story I wrote.
> 
> Original unaltered quote attributed to both Willard Motley and James Dean. As I'm not sure, I will credit both.


End file.
